From Scratch – Adventures in Independent Music Making

Posts Tagged ‘Inspiration’

“I’m just gonna lie here and fish in my mind”…

Sounds like it could be a lyric to a song, doesn’t it?

The jelly fish whispered words of wisdom when I put him in my ear.

He said, “You’ve learned alot about the sea, my Dear, now it’s time to use your fins”.

Last week I didn’t want to blog … at all. When I don’t want to do something I really enjoy, it usually means one or two things:

a) I’m burnt out or

b) The purpose of the thing is changing

I am relieved to say that this time it is the latter.

I am so inspired to create right now (which is what being an artist is all about), but my blog is very ‘Left Brained’. It feels like an assignment instead of a mode of expression.

Now that I am 3 articles into my monthly column on Women’s Radio, I feel the need to divide my brain a little more for these projects. The articles on WomensRadio are the resource-based accounts of my adventure that I hope other independent musicians will find useful. It is time, however, for this blog to become a more personal and creative representation of who I am as an artist and a person; A brief, weekly insight into my oddball mind that my followers who aren’t musicians can relate to along with my fellow musicians (because we’re all a little weird in our own way, aren’t we?).

One week it may be a poem based around an image of me doing something silly. Another week it may be straight up philosophy and reflection. Perhaps sometimes it will be a piece of art I have created or a song I have recorded… it could be anything. It will be whatever I’m inspired by, not just thinking about.

* “I can’t even think about wading right now. I’m just gonna lie here and fish in my mind.” is a phrase that caught my eye when I googled “the fish in my ear said”. It’s on page 77 of this edition of Field and Stream and was said by angler, Colby Lysne.

Meghan Morrison

www.meghanmorrison.com

It is easy to become wrapped up in our own artistic inner worlds. We often write “for ourselves” and “only for ourselves”. It is cathartic to work through our psychological and emotional problems in music and it is meaningful to us for other people to connect to the sentiments we share in our songs. But what about writing for other people and finding creative inspiration from without?

I was up until 1am last night recording a rough draft of a song that I wrote for placement in the soundtrack to filmmaker, and friend, Graziano Mainolfi’s next short film (“After She’s Gone”).  I will also be scoring the short and am really excited to take on that challenge. I definitely see myself writing a lot more for film as my career progresses and I think that is because I really enjoy writing for other people… even fictional ones. haha.

This morning, while reflecting on this particular song and being proud of how well it parallels the film, it occurred to me that I’ve been writing for other people a lot this year. I don’t write these songs for other singers to perform, but they are written for purposes other than inclusion on my records or in my live shows.

The song last night, which I am calling “Shy Lungs”, was written specifically for Graz’s film. The lyrics are about the characters of the film and the music is composed in a style that the director asked for.  This is a song I NEVER would have come up with if I was just writing for myself and left to my own devices.  Similarly, I wrote a song as a wedding gift for my friends Kate and BJ last spring. It was a sentimental piece written to honour the unique qualities of their relationship and how free and accepting they are of each other as a couple. I think it is one of the most beautiful songs I have ever written and, once again, I NEVER would have thought to write that song if I wasn’t in need of a wedding gift for them.

I also wrote a song for my brother as a graduation gift and 2 Christmas songs for my friend Leeann who ordered a custom song as part of my button maker campaign late last fall. A number of people have submitted music, lyrics, or poems to me to turn into full songs and that really excites me. I’m flattered that anyone would come to me in such a way, especially with poems/lyrics; it’s a very vulnerable experience to share one’s art.

So, as a creative writer (not just a songwriter) and friend, I am really excited to take on the challenges of trying to write from a perspective outside of my own (and in imaginary or real environments) to create something meaningful for people that matter to me. Much like the “object writing” I was talking about in an earlier blog, I see these songs as a great opportunity to get outside of my head and out of the natural groove and songwriting comfort zone I work in when writing music for my albums.

Ah! My alarm just went off and I have to go to the vocal school, but there is so much more to write about … I will have to make a “Part 2″…

Meghan Morrison

www.meghanmorrison.com
@MegsMorrison

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Connecting with fans after our set at The Horseshoe, Toronto, Canada 083110

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Fans are the single most important key to becoming and remaining a career artist. It doesn’t matter if we are major label acts or independent artists sleeping in our tour vans, if we don’t have fans we have no one to sell records to; radio djs will take our songs out of rotation if no one requests them; bar owners won’t give us a guarantee if we can’t draw a crowd; and we’ll go bankrupt renting venues if no one ever buys a ticket. I don’t know a lot at this stage of my development, but this much I understand and that is exactly why I, along with so many of others, have joined Ariel Hyatt’s Music Success in Nine Weeks Blog Challenge.

In my Week 6 blog entry of Wave 2: “Newsletter & Surveys” I described how I came to reincarnate my newsletter by conducting surveys/focus groups with existing newsletter subscribers and asking them what they would like to see in my newsletter , what they would like to see taken out, and/or what they would like to see done differently. This “study” resulted in the creation of my Choose Your Own Adventure style newsletter. Remember those books from the 90s? Where you didn’t read the whole thing through from start to finish and you had no idea where the story was going to take you? That is what my newsletter is like now … with a twist: it’s still based on real life. It’s a fictional story that unravels my monthly news as the story progresses and has a summary at the end for readers who are pressed for time. Basically, you are given 2 options to choose from at the end of each “page” and that determines your trajectory through the story/updates. It’s not all fun and games though: make the wrong choice and Brad (our drummer) might turn into a rabid zombie and eat your brains for dinner!

Zombie Brad is a character from my most recent (Halloween themed) newsletter that went out just after October. It was a lot of fun to create and with 25% of my listers reading it within 2 hours of it being sent out, I can see that my efforts are being appreciated and that creating a unique newsletter which reflects this writer’s personality and artistry really works. 2 weeks later, that particular issue has had a readership of 37% . Though down from the first ‘new’ newsletter (which closed at 40% readership), it’s still 10% more than I had been getting before starting this new format … and there is bound to be fluctuation from month to month, so I’m not disheartened.

Do I think you should do a choose your own adventure newsletter?  No. It would be safe to say that I spent around 20 hours planning, writing, editing, formating, coding, and creating images for the last one. To commit that kind of time to one aspect of your overall project, the inspiration has to come from your own ideas. As Derek Sivers (founder of CD Baby) says, “Every contact with the people around your music  (fans and industry) is an extension of your art”.

This quote comes from his Free E-Book, which he directed me to after chatting with him via email over the weekend. It has a lot of really useful and inspiring thoughts and approaches to communication. If you are an artist, you should definitely read it. It fits nicely in line with Ariel‘s teachings and expands on issues many of us have been struggling with from day one (many of you are familiar with my panic attacks over “I can’t keep up with my email!”, “I don’t have time to do all of this!” and “How do I communicate this to people?”, well he’s got lots of suggestions that I can already tell are going to help … and, obviously, are ones that have worked for him, considering he’s managed to create one of the most valuable indie music distribution sites out there.

~By the way, he likes the idea of our Cyber Jam! :) If you haven’t experienced the webcast yet, join us on Tuesdays. 8pm EST~

Now, do I think you should ask your fans what they want from their interactions with you and then find your own unique way of connecting with them through your newsletter? Absolutely! Ariel encourages us to do this for our ‘products’ (CDs, merch, etc.) and, in my mind, it should apply to any part of our musical business that is dependent on fan reception/interaction.

Our true fans (see 1000 true fans, an article heavily recommended by Ariel and many others in the industry) want to be involved with our projects. They want to connect and help us create a ‘product’ or experience they will love. This became more evident to me yesterday when we reached and surpassed our RocketHub goal for our button maker campaign (I am now going to be able to make and sell buttons so that I can pay the artists that come to perform on my weekly webcast).

With RocketHub I set a financial goal and asked my crowd to help me raise funds for this special project in exchange for a piece of the end product (in my case, buttons … for the most part. Some people ordered custom written songs). I was confident that we could reach our goal, but I never expected each fan/supporter to contribute as much as they did… or to reach our goal 9 days early… or to still have more pre-orders coming in after the fact … people actually want this stuff and want to suppport our vision :) What a great feeling, to know I’ve started something people really want to be a part of. We’re onto something!

Much like the focus groups I did for my newsletter development during the last wave, this RocketHub campaign also served as a testing ground to see what kind of products people would be willing to spend money on. 1 person was happy to pay $50 to join the button of the month club; 2 people liked my custom magnetic x’s and o’s game enough to pay $25 for them; 2 people were even happy to pay me $150 for custom written songs (something I have done many times for free … maybe I should take this more seriously); most of the people (9) wanted 100 buttons for $20, which suggests to me that most of my business will likely be in regular straight forward buttons for businesses and artists. And that’s great! Now I know where I should start promoting and to whom.

Both Derek and Ariel highlight the importance of having a compelling subject line of an email/newsletter. One that stands out in a busy inbox and screams ‘open me!’ to people who were too drunk to remember signing up at your gig last week. I was originally going to write about how I was stumped on subject lines, but after reading Derek’s e-book (if you haven’t clicked the link yet and you are an independent artist, do it! DO IT! Imagine me staring you down right now until you do. Intimidating, I know. haha). In the spirit of what I have learned from this document, my next newsletter subject line is going to be “daring”, “weird”, and “say the opposite of what I want them to do”. It will go something like this: “This newsletter is not cool at all! Don’t open it. Ever! Not even if your Mom says it okay” … the next experiment beings …

Any other suggestions for subject lines in the audience?

(by the way, signing my name at the bottom of the blog post -as per last week’s experiment- didn’t work. It didn’t come up in the Google alerts. Matthew Morrison and that Snuggie Sutra girl keep hogging all the spots … hmmm maybe having those words in there will help :) … or maybe I just need to get more readers hahaha)

Meghan Morrison

P.S. Not only do you get to read my creative stories (Which aren’t cool at all! Don’t ever read them! Not even if you’re threatened by a marsupial), but you also get a Free Download of My Tour Album when you…

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